Chapter 4
Our itinerary for the day did indeed start with a hike, before our spa appointment in the afternoon for a couples massage. I was grateful to Ricky for pulling us back in the direction of plans and order.
It also occurred to me to be grateful for the natural beauty all around us as we motored north on the highway, the road hugging the coastline, sometimes along the sides of ruggedly forested coastal bluffs, sometimes dipping down to sea level and running along marshy or sandy beaches.
There was a peace here that almost allowed me to forget what had happened the evening before.
Ricky seemed to be feeling the mellow vibes, too; his driving, which tended toward the aggressive in crowded urban settings, became more relaxed and smooth—almost sedate, even—in these calming environs.
His summer wardrobe, already a little questionable in Northern California’s June gloom, had made few concessions to Oregon’s even grayer skies; he was still in shorts and sunglasses and a nautical-looking Breton stripe T-shirt, but in a nod to today’s activity he had at least traded his sandals for sneakers.
As he steered his car through the highway’s sweeping curves, he began to whistle softly.
“You really are feeling better, aren’t you?” I said.
“Yep,” he said cheerfully, then turned a funny smile on me. “I—well, not to make you uncomfortable, or to feel obligated to do it again, since apparently we’re a deadly combination—but I’m very responsive to touch. So when you cuddled me last night—”
My face burned red. It seemed we were going there after all. “Would we call it that?”
“Call it what you want,” he smirked. “Anyway, it was very helpful, and I appreciate that you did that.”
“It’s okay,” I said stiffly, trying not to let myself get too flustered.
“No, I really am grateful. I’d like to do something for you in return.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “You do lots of things for me, all the time. You’ve done all the driving, for one thing.
And you help me talk to people, even though it’s not your job, and you …
you … wear those shorts. …” I trailed off, staring at his legs more boldly than I ever had before and not catching myself because I was too busy wondering how that last bit had made it all the way out of my mouth.
Not that it wasn’t something I deeply appreciated, but I was surprised at myself for saying it.
Ricky glanced down at his legs and grinned as he flicked the turn signal to leave the highway and head inland toward our trailhead.
“You’re welcome for that,” he laughed, returning his eyes to the road, which was now a winding two-lane country route following a small river through a narrow green valley.
“And for the other things, but you did make me think of something I could do for you.”
He pulled the car onto the loose gravel shoulder of the road and turned off the engine. He turned toward me and put his arm across the back of my seat. “Also, I’ve been thinking about something I’d like to propose.”
My stomach did a little flip, and my mouth went dry. I gulped and croaked, “What’s that?”
“I’ve been thinking about our assignment here—Drea’s whole ‘find romance’ thing—and I had an idea about how we could get into the right frame of mind.”
I was suddenly flooded with visions of what ideas Ricky might have had, which I realized were actually ideas that, on some subconscious level, I was having, all of which were wildly inappropriate and terrifying and thrilling. I forced myself to nod so he’d continue.
“Well,” he went on, pushing his sunglasses up onto the top of his head, revealing the mischievous sparkle in his eyes, “when you’re just good friends, like we are, being told to go out and ‘find romance’ feels like a lot of pressure, right?
Going on a trip in search of romance is something that people who are already in romantic relationships do.
So, what if—only for this trip, for the purposes of this assignment, mind you—we pretend that we’re already in a romantic relationship? ” He finished with a satisfied smile.
“Huh? You lost me,” I said.
“You pretend I’m your boyfriend, and I’ll pretend you’re my boyfriend. That way, seeking out romance will feel more natural. And, since it’s only pretend, there’s no pressure to actually be romantic; but it’ll help you think that way.”
This seemed like a stretch, but I was starting to see an upside.
If Ricky and I were pretend boyfriends, it might provide some cover to get past this whole will we or won’t we pattern I felt like I kept getting us stuck in and to finally go for it.
I wondered if Ricky was thinking along similar lines; something in the faintly wicked arch of his eyebrows told me he might be.
“So, how would this work?” I said slowly. “How do we pretend to be boyfriends?”
“I think it’s pretty much all mental,” he replied.
“You don’t have to second-guess me, because you know I’m your boyfriend and I like you, and I can think the same way about you.
So we can be more comfortable together, and be more present in the moment to look for the romantic angle for our story, because our relationship is established.
We don’t have to do anything different physically,” he said, his grin turning into another smirk.
“We don’t have to hold hands or cuddle or get all lovey-dovey or anything.
And you don’t have to keep pretending to objectify me and my little shorty-shorts. Unless you really want to.”
My face was engulfed in flames of embarrassment. “Um, okay, good,” I stammered.
“Maybe it would help with your curse, too,” he said, twisting the knife even deeper. “What do you think? It’s kind of a goofy idea, but maybe it would help?”
It was a deeply silly idea, one that, if I agreed to it, would be as purely a pretense on my side as I hoped it was on his, a shortcut to getting to where I really wanted to be.
I tried to summon the same nerve I had the night before when he’d proposed going into the hot tub.
“Okay, sure. Let’s do it,” I finally said.
“Great!” He reached the hand that had been draped over my seat back up and through the hair on the back of my head, half tousling and half massaging.
I wondered if he was going to pull me in for a kiss—wondered, hoped, tomato, tomahto—thinking that that would be a very non-pretend way to embark on a pretend relationship, but instead, after a second he pulled his hand away, reaching his arm back over me to his side of the cabin.
“So, for my first official act as your pretend boyfriend, and to repay your kindness last night, I said I had thought of something I could do for you,” he said. “It would also kind of be something you did for me, too; you mentioned that I had been doing all the driving. …”
I wondered where this was going. “What did you have in mind?”
“Would you like to learn how to drive?”
“What, now?” I hadn’t expected this.
“Sure. It’s quiet here. We have a little time. Did you ever want to learn?”
I thought about this for a minute, hoping that if I dragged out this answer, I might also be able to postpone responding to Ricky’s offer. “Maybe I kind of did, when I was younger,” I said. “My dad really wanted to teach me, but then, right before I was old enough, he died.”
“Aha,” Ricky said. “I could see where that might dampen your enthusiasm.”
“I suppose it did, for a while,” I agreed. “And then I was in college, and then working, and getting around fine without it. So eventually I kind of forgot about it. It didn’t seem necessary.”
“I could see that,” Ricky said thoughtfully. “But it seems funny that you’re a travel writer, but you can’t do the simplest, most spontaneous kind of traveling, you know?”
“I hadn’t really thought of it that way before,” I said.
“I mean, driving around town can be a real pain,” he said.
“I get why you wouldn’t mind not having to do that.
But getting out on the open road and going somewhere—I don’t know, I like it.
And it’s always nice on a road trip with your pretend boyfriend when you can share the driving duties.
” An eyebrow shot up as he smirked at me.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling a little guilty again.
“I’m teasing, mostly,” he said. “So how about it?”
It was a gray, cool day, but I suddenly felt very sweaty, much more nervous than I had been when Ricky made his proposal, which I had mostly felt intrigued by.
I nervously took stock of the metal dashboard of Ricky’s car with its flight-deck array of inscrutable gauges and lights, the rudimentary lap belts around our hips, that terrifying ball-on-a-stick shifter sticking up between us. “Is this the best car to learn in?”
“Absolutely. Best way to learn. Manual transmission, no power steering or brakes—if you can learn to drive this car, anything else will be a piece of cake.”
“Uh, gee, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have a learner’s permit or anything.”
“I don’t think you need one at your age,” Ricky deadpanned.
I regarded him suspiciously. “Is that true?”
He grinned and shrugged. “If it isn’t, who’s going to know?”
I usually like to build myself up to learning new skills.
But Ricky wanted to do this for me, and I wanted to make him happy, and there was the hot little Ricky devil on my shoulder once again, now my fake-but-maybe-secretly-not-so-fake boyfriend, even, making me want to do things that previously I’d never have wanted to do, so I said, “Okay, then. Teach me to drive.”
“Yes!” Life-size, non-devil Ricky gave the steering wheel a celebratory thump.
My legs were only a little wobbly as Ricky and I each rounded the car to switch places, but upon taking the driver’s seat I found my sweaty palms slowly sliding their way down the thin plastic rim of the steering wheel as I goggled in complete incomprehension at the instrument panel and wondered if I should be doing anything with my feet.